Godsmack
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Smackin’ with Sully
An Interview with Sully Erna of Godsmack
By Troy Schmidt
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| Should music tell it the way it is or the way it should be? |
| I think music should tell it the way it is…It speaks for itself most of the time. You either like it or don’t like it. |
| What’s your favorite horror/vampire movie? |
| I would have to say Interview with a Vampire. It’s a part of the novels that Anne Rice put out. |
| Have you read those? |
| Yeah. |
| Anything else you’re reading? |
| Actually I just got the Al Pacino autobiography. I’m going to dip into that. |
| Do you want to be an actor? |
| I don’t know. Maybe some day. Something I’ve thought about. |
| Any other actors that are your heroes? |
| I like Pacino a lot. I like DeNiro. Love Jack Nicholson. Joe Pesci. Clint Eastwood. The manly men. |
| What was your feeling at Woodstock ’99? |
| It was great. Very overwhelming for us. We just finished Ozzfest and flew in on the red-eye. I don’t think we expected what we had seen. It was people as far as the eye could see. It woke our asses up. Before that we couldn’t have told you what it was going to be about. |
| It was quite a contrast to the original and in retrospect it’s gotten a lot of bad press. |
| It’s too bad. People need to learn to relax and have a good time without destroying ****. I don’t agree with any of that stuff. I think it’s about the music and people getting together to enjoy themselves. It’s ridiculous to me. |
| Do you think it’s a sign of our times? |
| I don’t know. They riot over everything nowadays. Rodney King gets a beating, they riot over that. That’s understandable. The LA Lakers win the National Championship, they riot over that. They riot whether it’s good or bad. |
| What do your parents do? |
| My mom’s been a nurse her whole life. My father worked with computers and stuff like that. |
| What do they think of their son? |
| They’re proud. My mom’s been with me since day one. She’s always supported me. Never discouraged me. Shipped my drums all over the country. She’s always been there for me. We have a really good relationship. |
| How did Alice in Chains feel about you borrowing a lyric for your band name? |
| I don’t know. I never borrowed it from them. |
| That’s what I had read. |
| No. We were well aware it was an Alice in Chains song. |
| You want to set the record straight? |
| The last drummer we had in the band. His name was Joe Darko. He came into rehearsal one day before we were signed. We had to do a photo shoot for some press photos. We had paid for it out of our own pockets. He had this big cold sore on his lip and I was making fun of him. The next day I came into rehearsal with a big cold sore on my lip. The guitar player said, “You see. God just smacked you for making fun.” That’s how it came up. |
| You say on your website that maybe the lyrics are harsh, but they’re not negative. What’s the difference? |
| Some people want to misinterpret rough for like suicidal tendencies. I don’t preach any of that and we don’t write any of that. The intent with my lyrics is feelings I go through, and emotions I go through, and getting stuff off my chest. It’s really just me stomping my feet and jumping up and down and crying about it. It has nothing to do with promoting hard to anyone. |
| Do you think music is an outlet or a catalyst for anger? |
| I think it’s an outlet for me. It’s a way for me to vent my emotions. I use it as sort of therapy. |
| What about for the crowds? |
| I think they use it in a different way. I think they want to release a lot of energy. I think it’s harmless. They jump around all night in the pit. Yell and scream and clap their hands. Whatever they can do to enjoy the show. And when they get home they’re too tired to want to go and rob a convenience store or beat someone up. It’s a way for them to release their own energy. |
| What were you like in high school? |
| I was a terror. I was awful. I wasn’t there that often. When I was there, I was usually in trouble. |
| You were one of those that everyone thought was never going to make it. |
| I was going to jail for sure. As far as they knew. I like to bump into them every now and then and match up salaries. |
| Think you’ll go to the reunion? |
| I never graduated. |
| You talk a lot about the Wiccan religion, which you’re a part of. How do you find hope in your faith? |
| It was just a religion I found that I was really in tune with when it came to karma. Being nature based. It’s something I use on a personal level to keep me balanced, center myself when I’m stressed out. Like any religion, people turn to something at some point to mediate to or pray to or something to say thanks to. That happens to work for me. |
| It gets a bad rap. When you say “Wiccan” people stiffen up… |
| It’s because it’s pre-Christianity. When Catholicism came around, it was shot down as satanic, whatever they didn’t understand, whatever they didn’t want to use in their churches. I think they took a bunch of stuff from Wicca, whether it was the chalice, the frankincense and myrrh. They use now in funerals. It’s stuff witches used hundreds and hundreds of years before Christianity existed…After the witch hunts, it was pegged as demonic. People grew up with Hollywood witches and Halloween and that kind of stuff. It’s really not about that. When most kids find out what it’s really about, they’re really disappointed. They think they can levitate or change people into frogs. |
| It’s just like a lot of religions that get a bad rap. When people don’t know what it is. |
| It’s just like Buddhism or Native Americanism… |
| Christianity. Catholicism… |
| Whatever works. We don’t preach and tell you what to do. I know that Christianity is the only religion that doesn’t allow you to educate yourself and learn about other religions. It’s this way or no way. Every other religion isn’t like that. I don’t like feeling I have a ball and chain on me. |
| The school shooting that happened at Santana High School…the shooter, they say, was influenced by a Linkin Park song (called In the End). He was also tied into Wicca. |
| So now it’s Linkin Park’s fault. It’s Marilyn Manson’s fault that all those people in Colorado got shot…people never want to point the finger at themselves. They just want to use whatever it is as an excuse. Oh well. It’s too bad. |
| Do you think it’s possible that a kid like that can find something in a song that’s not really there? |
| I don’t think it had anything to do with the song. I think the kid had issues and people just didn’t see the signs. People don’t just pull out a gun and start shooting people after listening to a CD. I don’t buy that. |
| One of your songs is called “Sick of Life” but things are going so well for you. How can those two go together? |
| How would you know what’s going well for me? You see what you see on stage for an hour. People get fooled by that. We still live normal lives and we still have our own problems that we deal with—people that want to stab you in the back, people that want to betray you. There’s a lot that goes on besides that one hour on stage. There’s a lot of reality left in a day. Ultimately it comes down to that I never found myself in the mood to write when I was feeling good. I’m out enjoying myself and doing stuff. When I feel depressed or I am bummed out about something or I’m mad is when I go into a hovel and write lyrics and spend time by myself. That’s when I get stuff off my chest. |
| None of your songs Pat Boone’s going to cover. |
| I don’t know. He may. |
| Do you think success has been good? |
| It’s been awesome. We’ve had a great time. I have nothing to complain about when it comes to the band’s career and where we’re going…What I write in my lyrics is a combination of what I’ve felt in the past. I feel I’ve cleansed a lot of that out of me in the last two records. Who knows what the new Godsmack will sound like? I don’t think it will be all flowers and poems. It may not be as dark either. |
